


silent conversations

by skuls



Series: William AU [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Ghouli-adjacent, spec fic/au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 01:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13513908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Inspired by the promos for 11x05: Ghouli/the promo blog for Ghouli, ghouli.net: What if a clairvoyant William had grown up with Mulder and Scully?





	silent conversations

**Author's Note:**

> one part ghouli spec fic, one part au, entirely inspired by the ghouli.net blog that fox released. mostly inspired by the You are the Living Key in a Dying Function and This Screaming Skull entry (but i have taken my own liberties with the area of william's clairvoyance). 
> 
> this is wayyyy longer than i ever expected. what the hell is gonna happen after i actually see the episode?

William is two when he sees his father's return. He's tucked into his mother's side in bed while she reads him a story, his thumb in his mouth, and Scully is reading about the father bear and the baby bear walking through the woods, and her voice doesn't tremble a bit. And then Will takes his thumb out of his mouth and says, “ _ My _ daddy coming back,” with a self-satisfied tone.

Scully stops reading. The book does not slip from her hands; she sets it down gently and wraps an arm around him. “Sweetie?” she asks, and her voice only trembles a little now. “Where did you hear that?” She has told him stories about Mulder before, but far and few between because she doesn't know how to answer his questions. And he rarely asks them. He has no concept of society’s ideas of what a family should be, so young, and to him, it is just the two of them. It has always been just the two of them. (She hopes that it will not always be the two of them. She hopes.)

“Daddy coming back,” says William, before popping his thumb back in his mouth. “I see it.”

Scully's eyes flit around the room, like Mulder is going to come into the room any minute and sweep her off her feet. “See what?” she asks, turning back to her son and stroking his hair away from his forehead. 

“Daddy ride home,” he says around his thumb. “In car. Read, Mama.”

Scully shakes it off, this nagging feeling of longing that has never completely abated since Mulder walked away. She thumbs a tear out of the corner of her eye and finishes reading the book, tucks William in and kisses him goodnight. She goes alone to her bedroom and digs the Knicks t-shirt she stole from Mulder's apartment out from the bottom of her drawer, pulling it on and crawling into bed. She closes her eyes and tries not to think of Mulder. And by the next day, she's almost forgotten it. 

Almost, until she and William get back from the grocery store the next day, and she sees the tall, dark-haired man standing at their door, staring at the gold numbers on the door. “Daddy!” William says excitedly, pointing and wriggling in her arms. Scully lets the grocery bags in her free hand drop to the ground. 

He turns, and it is Mulder. Mulder, whose eyes widen at the sight of their son, face paling. For a second, Scully can't breathe. Mulder laughs a little, nervously, stepping closer slowly. “I, uh,” he says. “I didn't have my keys, Scully.”

She steps forward at the same time he does, and he gathers them up in his arms. “Mulder,” she whispers, and she's kissing him again and again. William is squashed in between them, giggling and tugging at Mulder's jacket, and he's holding them both close. “You came back,” she whispers and smiles, her nose pressed into the side of his face. He tilts his head to kiss her mouth, his hand reaching down to cup William's head.

“Daddy's back,” William says, patting Mulder's chest with tiny hands. “Told you, Mama.”

\---

William is four when he is able to name every single present under the Christmas tree at least two weeks before Christmas. At first, Scully thinks he's been sneaking around, getting a look at them while they were wrapping, but Mulder swears he was watching cartoons in the living room the entire time. When she asks Will, he tells her the exact same thing. “I didn't go in your room, Mama,” he tells her seriously.  “I was watching TV.” 

Scully is crouching so that her face is level with his. She looks him in the eye, and she can see he is not lying. William tries to be a lot sneakier with his lies, but he usually loses his composure and starts giggling behind his hand, delighted at trickling his parents. Mulder has commented more than once that his teenage years will be hell if he never outgrows that. William's face is still and serious and maybe a little bored, but not smug. “You're not lying to me?” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Then how did you know what was under the tree?”

William shrugs. “I saw you wrapping presents in the bedroom.” Scully's irritation flares up, but he's still talking. “While I was watching TV, I saw it. I got a truck and a bear and a  _ Sesame Street _ video!” 

Scully says slowly and carefully, “How could you see the presents while you were watching TV?”

He shrugs again. “I just do. Am I in trouble, Mama?” 

“Scully, c’mere for a second.” Mulder is standing in the doorway; he motions her into the other room. She stands with a sigh and goes to join him. William flops onto his stomach with a bored sigh. Mulder shuts the door and leans towards her, whispering, “I don't think he's lying, Scully.”

“Mulder, there is no way he could've known unless…” she begins wearily. 

“No, Scully, hear me out. Remember what you told me about when he was a baby, about the mobile moving? Remember the thing he told you the night before I came back?”

She pauses for a moment, her brow furrowed in deep thought. She hasn't thought about that in months. “That… that was a coincidence,” she says finally. 

“What if it wasn't, Scully?” he asks softly, his hand on her shoulder. 

She remembers the way she had barely mentioned Mulder for months before he came home, finding it too painful, too hard to explain, yet William had known who Daddy was and accepted him without question. She remembers the way that William just seems to know things, the way he can always find things when they lose them: their keys, Scully's necklace or earrings, the wedding bands that Mulder had bought despite the lack of a little piece of paper between them. Mulder calls him their little metal detector. She remembers the way things seem to float sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, before she turns around and sees William staring disappointedly at something sitting mobily on the floor. She remembers. 

She turns and sees their son lying on his stomach on the floor, staring at the threads of the rug with a miffed expression on his face. A perfectly normal child whose hair is sticking up at the back and has his right sock on the wrong way, twisted around so the heel is on top, a food stain on the hem of his sweater. She sees their son, and she knows that there is so much more to him than they ever could've imagined. “Oh, my god,” she whispers. 

William is not lying, and William is not surprised at Christmas, except by presents from her mother and Bill, and from the last minute addition that Mulder buys in an attempt to give him something he doesn't expect. “How are you able to see some things and not others?” Mulder asks that night, sitting on the floor with William and mugs of hot chocolate. 

“I dunno,” says William, before taking a big gulp of hot chocolate and getting whipped cream all over his upper lip. “It just comes sometimes.”

A week later, Scully will comfort William as he cries in her lap because he is absolutely sure that the guinea pig at his daycare has died overnight. Scully doesn't believe it until she gets a call from the daycare leader the next morning, warning parents to prepare their children from the absence of Mr. Buttons, suggesting that they tell William that Mr. Buttons had to go away to a happier place. 

Scully thinks this is bullshit. Her son knew that Mr. Buttons was dead before the teacher herself did. His mother works with death every day, and William confesses that he can see her at work sometimes when he's playing at school. She sits him down and tells him the truth. 

\---

She and Mulder only ever fight about it once, when William is five. It comes up when William goes to spend the weekend with her mother in Baltimore, and Mulder tells her that he thinks they should take William to a specialist on the first night. He has found someone he trusts, he tells her, who has no ties to the Syndicate. Who might be able to explain why William can see what he does, do what he does. 

(They caught him levitating little plastic animals, once, watched through the door, and while Mulder looked some mixture between terrified and absolutely awed, Scully had gone and cried in the bathroom. William's ability terrifies her and solely terrifies her, because she is afraid of the people who made him that way. Afraid that they will find out they were successful and come back for him.)

Scully is furious at Mulder's proposition. She tries to push past him, tries to shut down the conversation before it goes too far. Mulder is explaining to her why it is important to understand what is going on, to better understand him, and she has to hold herself back from slapping him. After Emily, she swore. None of her children would ever be experiments again. “We are not doing this,” she growls at him, shoving past. “It is not a question, it is not an option. We are not talking about this.”

“Scully, I really think this will be good,” he starts, reaching out to touch her arm, and she shakes him off violently. “Scully, wait, just listen to me.”

“Fuck you!” she hisses, turning on him angrily. “He is not an X-File, Mulder, he is our son!” Mulder jolts back, his face white, and she knows she has gone too far but she doesn't stop. “He is our son, Mulder, and I will not put him through this. I will never put my children through this again. No matter what answers it gives you.”

Mulder's jaw clenches as he looks at her, blinking hard. He turns on his heel and walks out of the apartment. Scully slumps against the refrigerator, arms wrapped around her waist. She waits for Mulder to come back, but he doesn't. 

She goes to bed alone, the sheets cold, the apartment quiet without William and Mulder playing in the living room, their shouts filling the hallways. Her stomach hurts. She calls William at her mother's, listens to him chatter excitedly about Grandma's cookies and playing with her old toys until her heart stops thudding in her chest. 

Mulder comes home at almost one in the morning. His eyes are red, and when he wraps his arms around her she lets him.

He speaks quietly. “I know Will isn't an X-File, Scully,” he says. “I know he isn't. I'm not using him to look for answers… god, Scully, he's our son.”

Scully gulps, rolling into him and tucking her face into the curve of his neck. He is warm against her. “I know,” she mumbles. “I know you don't. I'm sorry I said it.”

“I'm sorry, too,” he murmurs. “I just… I love him so much. And I want to do right by him. I want to understand what he can do so we can know how to deal with it.”

“I know you do,” Scully whispers. She wipes her eyes and reaches up to touch his face. “Mulder, listen. Mulder, if anyone knows how to handle these things, it's you. You have years of experience, X-Files to consult if that's necessary.” She inhales sharply; it isn't what she wants, but if it has to happen. If it has to. “And I trust you,” she says. “You're the only one I'd trust.”

They don't take William to a specialist. They buy a house in Farrs Corner, out in the country, and William announces that he knows at the dinner table the day they sign the contract. They'd never mentioned moving before.

Mulder and Scully share a knowing look. Scully tells him that they can get a dog. 

\---

When William is six, he breaks his arm. It's not unexpected—kids have spills and falls, and God knows Scully and her siblings broke a bone or two in childhood—but the way she finds out is not how she would've chosen. It's in the middle of class on a Monday, and she's in the middle of writing something on the board when it comes, a piercing headache that nearly drives her to her knees. She drops the chalk in her hand, grips the side of the desk to keep from falling down and swallows back nausea. And then she hears the sound of her son shrieking in her head. Flashes of him lying on the ground of his playground, wailing.

“Dr. Scully?” one of her students is asking. “Dr. Scully, are you okay?”

Scully stumbles to her feet, breathing shallowly until the nausea subsides. She doesn't know what just happened just now, but she's not going to wait around to find out. Her son is hurt. “Class is canceled,” she spits through gritted teeth before pushing her way to the door. 

The headache doesn't return, and neither does her son's voice. She drives to the school, knuckles white on the steering wheel. They call when she is halfway there, informing her that William fell off the jungle gym and hurt his arm, that it may be broken and they've called an ambulance. “I'm on my way,” Scully says. “Tell him I'm coming.” She tries Mulder several times on the way, but her calls don't go through. 

She sees the ambulance as soon as she gets to the school, pushes her way through a crowd of children to get to her son. “Will…” she whispers as she reaches his side, rubbing her hand up and down his good arm.

His left arm is bent at an unnatural angle, his face scraped up, and he looks up at her with fear and relief. “I'm scared,” he says. 

“You're gonna be fine. You've just broken your arm,” she says, trying to reassure them both. “Does it hurt anywhere else?" He shakes his head. “Okay, we're gonna get you to the hospital, and take some X-rays to make sure you don't have a concussion, okay, honey?”

He nods again. His face is white, but he is not frightened at the prospect of an X-Ray; he knows hospitals. Scully leans over him, checking him out, brushing hair away from his sweaty forehead, and tells the EMT giving her a suspicious look, “I'm his mother,” in an icy voice. She's played too much of this I’m-a-doctor game with the Mulder men and their hospital visit. 

They're loading him into the ambulance, Scully on his tail, when she hears Mulder's voice. “Scully!” She turns, and he is running up to them, worry clear on his face. “I've been trying to call you,” he says, his eyes going straight to William. “What happened? Is Will okay?”

“Hi, Dad,” William calls woefully from his stretcher.

“He's just broken his arm,” Scully says. “He's going to be fine.” She doesn't need to ask how he knows William was hurt. 

Worry across his face, Mulder climbs into the ambulance with their son, Scully right behind him. “Hey, buddy,” he says softly, leaning down to kiss William on the forehead. “How you feeling?”

“It hurts,” William says solemnly. “But Mom is gonna fix me.”

“The EMTs are going to fix you, baby,” Scully says, as much as she'd like to do it herself. She scoots aside with annoyance as one of the EMTs leans over Will with a pen light. “Follow the light with your eyes, okay?” The EMT shoots a look of annoyance back; people in the medical field hate other people stealing their thunder.

“Mom's good at fixing people,” Mulder says seriously, stroking hair back from William's forehead. “You're gonna be okay, bud. We'll be with you the entire time.”

Scully watches the motion of William's eyes dutifully, but she reaches for his good hand and squeezes. William is watching them both gratefully. Mulder leans down and kisses his head again. 

They are asked to wait outside of the room while Will is X-rayed. “We'll be right outside,” Mulder calls as they wheel him back, and William replies, “I know.” And he does know, he will know. 

Scully sinks into a chair, rubbing at her eyes. Mulder sits beside her and she takes his hand. “Are you okay?” he asks. 

She nods wearily. “Long day,” she mumbles. “Poor kid.”

“Yeah.” He squeezes her fingers. He says quietly, “You heard, didn't you? You had the headache and then you heard Will?”

Scully nods, blinking blearily. She rests her head on his shoulder. “I did,” she mumbles. 

“What do you think it means?”

“I don't know.” She brushes her fingers over the inside of his wrist. “But whatever it was, I'm glad I heard.” She wants to know if something bad happens to her son. After everything that happened to him when he was a baby, she's spent the last six years terrified of something happening to him when she is not with him. If they can hear him when he's hurt, then she hopes it doesn't stop. 

William gets a neon green cast and asks Mulder to draw him an alien and a sea monster. “I am disappointed in you, son,” says Mulder, whipping out a Sharpie. “I have told you a million times that aliens are gray.”

They take him back to the house, climb into their big bed with the dog and let William watch cartoons sandwiched between them. He falls asleep with his head on Mulder's shoulder. Scully fluffs the pillows under the broken arm and tucks blankets around him, relieved that he is safe and whole. 

\---

When William is seven, the FBI asks Mulder back to consult on a kidnapping case. They offer him his job back on the X-Files, a clean slate, as long as he helps them on this case. 

He and Scully argue over it a little bit, unsure of what it is they should do. Mulder insists that he is done with the FBI. Scully insists that the victim, an FBI agent named Monica Bannan, needs his help. She thinks that he can help. She thinks that he is the best person to consult with the psychic who is consulting on the case. She reminds him that it could've been either of them. Or their son. 

The case spirals, goes downhill. An agent dies. Monica Bannan is found dead. The psychic, a convicted pedophile, is a phony. Scully is regretting ever suggesting that they join this case. There is always the idea that they could just ask their son, but it goes unspoken. It is insane. They haven't told William a thing about the case because they don't want him to go looking for things and find something he won't be able to recover from.

After Dakota Whitney’s death, Scully is ready to give up, walk away, but Mulder refuses to give up. He disappears to look for more leads while Scully is conducting the autopsy on Monica Bannan’s head. 

Scully gets a call from her mother as she's leaving Quantico, who is staying with William, telling her that Will is worried about his father. “He's being a little irrational, Dana, but he's very upset,” she says. “He says that he sees Fox following a ‘bad man’, and then he says that his car went off the road…”

“His car went off the road?” Scully spits, speeding up to a jog towards her car. “Put him on the phone, Mom. Let me talk to Will.”

“Dana, I wouldn't take him seriously, he's just scared…”

“Mom, just put him on the phone!” she snaps. 

Her mother sighs. There's rustling on the other end, and then William says, “Mom?” nervously. 

“William, where is he?” Scully fumbles for her car keys, leaning against the door. 

“He's getting out of the car,” Will says. “He's okay. He's going to keep going. He wants to find the bad men.”

“Will, where is he headed?” Scully asks. “Can you tell me where he is?” 

William gives her the route where Mulder wrecked in a nervous voice. And then he asks, “Is Dad gonna be okay?”

“Sweetie, I'm going to hang up now,” Scully says, opening the car door and climbing in. “I will call you later. I want you to stop watching, okay? I want you to sit down and think about something else.”

“I can't just  _ stop, _ ” William whines on the other end, nerves clear in his voice. 

“I need you to try, okay?” She starts the car, pulling out of the parking space. “I love you. I'll call you soon.” She hangs up the phone and calls Mulder. He doesn't pick up. 

Skinner meets her at the crash site. Good old Skinner, who they barely see anymore because Mulder isn't at the FBI and Scully doesn't answer to him anymore. They follow Mulder's trail, Scully's heart thudding too hard against her ribs. Skinner is telling her that Mulder wouldn't do anything crazy when it comes, the headache. Pounding against her skull. And then she hears Will crying out:  _ Dad! _

Scully bends over, stomach against her knees, clutching her temple. “Scully?” Skinner is saying. “Scully, what's going on?” But she can't hear him over the roaring in her eyes. William is still speaking, rapid-fire in her mind:  _ They're hurting him, Mom, they're hurting him! Make them stop! _

In a flash, she can see what William sees. Mulder barely conscious, being dragged outside through the snow. An axe in the hand of his attacker. “Scully, are you alright?” Skinner protests. 

She holds up a hand dismissively. “William, talk to me,” she speaks out loud. “I know you can see me. Talk to me, what's going on? Where's Dad?”

The pain, which has eased only a bit, comes back stronger.  _ You're in the right place, Mama, by the mailboxes.  _

Scully sees the mailboxes out of the corner of her eye. “There, turn there,” she insists. 

Skinner complies, watching her worriedly. “Scully, what's…” he starts uncertainly. 

“Don't ask questions,” she snaps. Her heart is beating harder, she can't slow her heart rate. She hopes William cannot feel her fear. “Will, what am I looking for?” she asks.

Flashes of William, curled up on the couch hugging his knees, of Mulder on the ground near a chopping block, of dogs barking. Dogs barking in her head, dogs barking in real life. “Stop the car!” she snaps. Skinner puts it into park and she lunges out, her feet pounding the ground. As she draws closer, she sees it, Mulder on the ground and Mulder in front of her, and William screaming,  _ Mama, Mama, he has an axe! _

Pain rattling against her skull, she grabs a piece of wood and swings.

\---

They take Mulder to the hospital for hypothermia, and to make sure the drug gets out of his system. Scully sits with him in the back, holding his hand as he snores against her thigh; she thinks,  _ It's okay, Will, I got him, _ and hopes her son can hear. 

She calls her mother as soon as Mulder is stable, unconscious in his hospital bed with his fluids being replaced. She wants her to go ahead and bring William over; they both know he isn't sleeping. Her mother is hesitant, but she can hear Will pleading on the other end, and that is what convinces her.

Scully isn't foolish enough to think her mother approves of much of her life, of the two of them running off on cases while they have a child at home, but at least she is willing to contend with the midnight visits to the hospital. She sits beside Mulder's bed and waits. 

She hears them before she sees them; William's sneakers squeak loudly on the linoleum as he runs into the room. She stands to greet them and he runs straight for her  His head butts in Scully's stomach as he throws his arms around her waist. She hugs him tightly, pressing her nose into his hair and breathing in the No More Tears shampoo that her mother always buys for him. “Is Daddy asleep?” he mumbles. 

“Yes.” Scully strokes his hair, her heart rate slowing as she revels in the fact that they're okay, they're really all okay. “He's gonna be okay…”

“I know,” says William, pulling away to look at her. “I saw.”

He turns towards Mulder's bed then, walks to it and kicks off his shoes before climbing up gently. Mulder mutters something in his sleep but does not wake up. William crawls under the sheets, curling into his father's side. 

In the doorway, Scully's mother opens her mouth, a look of disapproval on her face. Scully shakes her head silently. She is not going to take this away from him. He needs this. 

“William,” she says softly. “I think we need to talk about some of what you saw tonight.”

“No, we don't.” William's voice is muffled as he shoves his face underneath Mulder's arm. “I've seen worse in movies.”

“Movies aren't real,” she replies carefully. “This was. William…” 

“I don't care!” William says angrily, rolling over under the tent of Mulder's arm to glare at her. “I can't help it, and even if I could, I wouldn't want to! Daddy would be dead if I hadn't seen it!”

Scully leans closer to look him in the eye. “Keep your voice down or you'll wake your father,” she says solemnly, and he nods, looking regretful. She puts her hand flat on the mattress like a peace offering. “Honey, I'm not mad at you,” she says. “I'm not. I'm grateful that you helped me find your father. I'm just worried about you.”

“I'm fine,” William replies petulantly, stifling a yawn. 

Like mother, like son, Mulder would say. “You know, your dad and I still have nightmares about things we saw at our jobs,” Scully tells him. He looks a little surprised, and she nods her confirmation. “It's a hard job, and it's scary sometimes to adults like us. I know it must've scared you.”

He nods a little. “Don't wanna talk about it,” he mumbles, yawning again. 

“Okay, sweetie. Get some sleep.” She kisses the top of his head and sits back in her seat. William curls against Mulder again, screwing his eyes shut. 

Her mother sits beside her, taking her hand. Scully sighs, leaning her head back against the wall. “Thank you for coming, Mom,” she mumbles gratefully. “And bringing Will. About what happened earlier…”

“Hush,” her mother says soothingly. “We'll talk about it later. Take your own advice and get some sleep, Dana.” 

Scully checks one more time to make sure that Mulder and William are both breathing, and then lets her eyes slip closed. 

\---

William has nightmares on and off for the next several weeks. He takes to padding into their room in the middle of the night. If it were anything else, Scully might protest; now, she just lets him climb over her to lie between them. 

Mulder turns down the job on the X-Files for a position lecturing at Quantico. They agree it's a good idea to be on the FBI’s good side, in case they ever have an extraterrestrial-related emergency, but that it's a bad idea to reenter the field. They're done chasing monsters in the dark. 

\---

William is eight, nine, ten. He's growing taller and taller until Scully's sure that she is definitely going to be the shortest person in the family. He hates baseball, he proclaims, which almost makes Mulder cry, but he loves being outside. On weekends, he'll disappear for hours with the dog into the woods and return smudged with dirt, a huge grim on his face. He's obsessed with space, can rattle off all of the planets and some of the moons. He enters the science fair and wins second place. He declares that he is a scientist who also believes in monsters, which Scully rolls her eyes at and Mulder finds hilarious. (“Well, there's no denying he's ours,” he declares. “The perfect combination of X-Files genes. It's an anomaly. He'd give Skinner worse headaches than we ever have.” Scully says, “Mulder, shut up.”)

William's ability doesn't stop. 

It doesn't work 100% of the time. They never ask him if he can see something, but on occasion, they expect him to know something without telling him. They get used to him announcing that he knows about things they talked about the night before—his performance at school, plans for the weekend, vacation ideas—so it's somewhat surprising to call up the stairs asking if he's ready to go and finding out that he has no idea what they're talking about. And he can never control who or what he hears or sees; it's very touch and go. 

It's a part of their life that they more or less get used to. (“Our kid is clairvoyant,” Mulder says at one point. “Aside from trying to keep him safe from the Syndicate, who the hell cares?”) They have to mentally remind themselves—and him—not to mention it in public, but it becomes routine, understanding that they more or less have no secrets from their son. It becomes a party trick at Thanksgiving—in the subtlest, least mind-read-y way) that convinces Bill that William is a wild child who constantly breaks the rules and disobeys his parents (he blames Mulder) and always makes Matthew snicker behind his hand. Will is under strict rule not to tell anyone at school. By their count, the only people who know are Skinner and Maggie, and they'd like to keep it that way. 

They can never hear him unless one of them is in danger or hurt, and that is rare since neither of them are in the field. At one point when William is ten, Scully is working late at the morgue when she feels a sensation not unlike a spike splitting her skull, and hears William's voice:  _ Mom Mom Mom there's someone in the building he has a knife Mom he's right down the hall Mom RUN.  _ She bites back a groan, stumbles dizzily to her gun, and manages to get it up and in front of her before the serial killer whose victims she is autopsying enters, shouting, “Stop right there!” Other than that incident, Scully doesn't hear her son in her head for years on end. 

William is eleven, twelve, and he decides he doesn't want to be an astronaut. He reads outside on the lawn, thick Stephen King books, and watches horror movies with Scully and old monster movies with Mulder. He writes short stories sometimes, his handwriting so messy that only he, Mulder, and a few of the more patient teachers can decipher it. He wins a contest in the eighth grade with a horror story that resembles an old X-File a little too closely when Scully reads it. “I am beaming with pride, son,” Mulder says over dinner, “but we have had the discussion about not disclosing classified FBI information, didn't we?” 

“Must be an X-File,” William replies snarkily, giving them a look that reminds Scully too much of the looks Mulder used to give his superiors when he thought that they were spouting bullshit. She rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. 

He gets snarkier with age, like they'd expected, and the ability only makes it worse. One night when he is twelve, Scully catches him writing down letters on a piece of paper and memorizing them when he'd claimed to be studying for the next day's history test. He'd seen the teacher making the test. Apparently he's been doing this for a while. 

Scully is furious. William protests that he has no way of controlling what he sees and he might as well take advantage of it, he's smart, he gets good grades, why shouldn't he do this and make his life easier? She makes him move his homework operation to the kitchen, instructs him that he has to tell one of them when he has a test and study with them. He hates it, or hates her, apparently, as he tells her. He stalks up to his room and slams the door. She sits at the kitchen table and endlessly curses humanity, teenagers, the people who did this to them. 

Mulder sits beside her at the table, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You know he doesn't really hate you,” he says softly. 

“Yeah, I know,” Scully murmurs, but she doesn't, really. She is not clairvoyant so she doesn't know how her son feels, but her son is, and it is her fault. Maybe it's right for him to hate her, because she's the reason he sees things he never asked for. 

“You know he'll probably just memorize the key if he can see it, right?” Mulder continues. “Even if you don't let him write it down.”

“I know,” Scully says again in an exhale. “I just don't want this for him. Any of it. And I don't like him cheating.” He is watching her carefully, so she continues. “Even if he wasn't clairvoyant, we'd have to punish him if we caught him stealing the key.”

Mulder nods, leans forward and kisses her forehead, right over the eye. “I know it's hard,” he says. “I've got this one, okay?” Scully nods in return. He runs a hand over her shoulder before going upstairs. She can hear the voices upstairs, Mulder's surprisingly steady one and William's louder one. She rubs her temples tiredly. She wonders if Will can see this part. 

For the next week or so, William stomps around, glaring at them out of the corner of his eye and snapping when they ask him questions. Scully confiscates his phone for an evening. The snark stops, but the glares remain. Scully's jaw clenches and she presses on. She and Mulder don't talk about what to do about it because they know he can probably hear them. It slowly, slowly fizzles out. 

The week after that, William is riding home from school with Scully, the radio playing quietly in the background, when he speaks. “I saw the key for today's test last night,” he says quietly. “Only this time I ignored it.”

Scully swallows, eyes on the road. “That's good, William. I'm proud of you,” she says, and means it. 

“Thanks.” He's jiggling his shoes against the dashboard, smearing dirt everywhere, and she's ready to tell him to stop when he speaks again. “I don't hate you, Mom,” he says. “I don't.”

Scully smiles, just a touch, ahead at the road. “I know, Will,” she says. “Thank you.”

\---

William is thirteen the first time he says something that scares Mulder out of his wits. They're sitting out at the picnic table working on a telescope, a birthday present for William from Bill and Tara, and William has been strangely quiet for most of the day. Mulder's trying to screw something in place when he speaks, his voice a startling baritone that they haven't quite gotten used to yet: “Dad, you weren't around when Mom had me, right?”

Mulder freezes in surprise, his hand stiff on the little black knob. He clears his throat, trying to get past the lump building in it, and says, “Well, I wasn't at the birth, unfortunately, because you know that your mom had to go in hiding to protect you both with a friend of hers…” Monica Reyes, who they'd always expected to be in their son’s life more, but who had apparently quit sometime while he was on the run. He clears his throat again, says, “But I was there right after you were born, and I stayed for as long as I could, before I had to… leave.” It is uncomfortable for him to talk about the time he missed with William, the lost years that he only knows through pictures and stories from Maggie. He vowed he would never leave his son again, and he won't. Never again. 

(He doesn't know if William resents him for these lost years; William almost never brings it up. He claims he doesn't remember, that he only remembers the years after Mulder's return.)

William is shifting uncomfortably beside him. “Yeah, I know all that, but…” He clears his throat, too, a nervous tic. “The pregnancy,” he clarifies. “Were you there for the pregnancy.”

Mulder looks down at the telescope, gulping back the fear that immediately builds in his throat. They have not talked to William about their abductions; they've never seen a reason to. Scully has talked around hers, occasionally, in an attempt to give an explanation of why William is the way he is, but they've never discussed it like this. “Well, Will,” he starts uncertainly. “Do you remember us telling you about when… Mom disappeared for a while, a long time before she had you?” William nods. Mulder swallows, says, “Well, when your mom was pregnant was you, just before she found out, I… disappeared. For a long time. And I couldn't come back until the eighth month of her pregnancy.” William is staring holes in the top of the wooden tabletop, not looking at him; Mulder reaches out and puts a hand on his son's shoulder to remind himself that they are both solid, both real. “Why do you ask?” he asks, trying to steady his voice. 

William fiddles with a piece of the telescope, his eyes on the horizon. “I have this weird memory,” he says. “It's hazy, and I don't think it's one I should have. But it's kind of like I'm seeing it from above, like I'm God or something. In it, Mom's pregnant, I think, but she isn't showing, and she's in a hotel room. And she tries to turn on a light, but it doesn't work. And she turns around, and… there you are. But you're kind of weird and see-through. And she looks really sad. And then she turns around for some reason, and when she turns back around, you're gone.”

Mulder's hand jolts out, knocking the telescope on his side. William looks up at him, startled. “Dad?” he asks carefully. 

“Don't tell your mother,” Mulder says, a little sharply. 

William nods immediately. “I won't,” he says. 

Mulder tries to breathe steadily, looking down at the blades of grass rustling in the breeze. Reminds himself that he is alive. Says, “Will, you can probably tell that this isn't easy for me to talk about it. But that memory, as far as I can tell, is real. And I don't know how you remember it, but I guess that's one of the questions we might never know the answer to.”

He feels rather than sees William nod. “I'm sorry I brought it up, Dad,” he says softly. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

Mulder shakes his head, finally looking up at him. His son is watching him, his eyes like Scully's watching him carefully. He smiles a little. This, this reminds him he is real. “You don't have to apologize, Will.” He leans forward to hug William, and he actually lets him, a rare occurrence as of late. 

“I think,” William says, his voice cracking a little, “that whatever was happening, Mom saw you because of me. I think I've been connected to you guys forever.”

Mulder swallows back tears, the lump in his throat, and holds his son close. 

\---

When William is fifteen, webseries celebrity and conservative conspiracy theorist Tad O’Malley comes looking for them. He wants to show them something, and Skinner thinks they should accept the meeting. 

William does not think very much of the guy. At first, he laughs so hard that milk dribbles out of his mouth and onto the table when Mulder mentions it at breakfast. “That guy is a whack job, Dad,” he says, wiping his mouth. “Worse than Thanksgiving with Uncle Bill. He gives me a headache. Does Skinner really think you should do it?”

“ _ Mr.  _ Skinner,” Scully says before sticking a spoonful of yogurt in her mouth. 

“Are you going to go?” William asks, kicking the legs of the table. 

“We haven't decided yet,” Mulder confesses. 

“Don't go,” William says, still laughing a little. “He's an jackass.”

“Language,” Scully says. 

“He is, though, Scully,” Mulder says, exchanging a companionable look with William. Scully rolls her eyes, but he can tell she agrees.

But Tad O’Malley is a determined jackass, if nothing else. He keeps asking until Mulder finally agrees. “Just to see what he wants, Scully,” he cajoles. She rolls her eyes and mutters something about him owing her one. 

O’Malley takes them to meet a woman named Sveta, who claims alien DNA. As she speaks, Scully can't help but think about her son. If anyone has alien DNA, it must be him. 

They're lead on a wild goose chase that ends in a series of new leads, but that also ends in a woman vanishing. Skinner wants them reinstated on the X-Files, and for the first time, they are actually on the same page: they don't think they should. 

Mulder admits that if it was sixteen years ago, he would be all over these leads, but it is now and they have a son to take care of. They'd promised a long time ago that they would always try to come home to him. “I feel the same way,” Scully says, when they discuss it in the living room that night. He takes her hand in his lap and squeezes. “But also, I think I'm just afraid. I don't know if I want to uncover the truth anymore. I'm worried it's too close to home.”

“You need to do it.”

They both jump, turning towards the doorway. William stands there in rumpled hair and bare feet, having clearly just woken up. “You need to go back,” he says. “To the X-Files.”

Scully exhales slowly. She's a lot more used to it now than she was when Will was little, but it still startles her whenever he shows up out of the blue like that.

“Why?” Mulder asks. “What did you see?”

Will shrugs. “I've been having… dreams,” he mumbles awkwardly. 

“What kind of dreams?” Scully asks. 

“I don't know, they're fuzzy. I just… I know you need to do this, Mom. It's important. I can feel it.” He swallows, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I know you're worried about leaving me alone, but I'm older now. I can handle this stuff. And I can help you if you're in danger and I see it.”

Scully swallows, looking from her partner to her son. The band on Mulder's finger is cold between hers. “It's really important?” she asks, and William nods. 

They call Skinner with their answer in the morning. 

\---

Being back on the X-Files is a strange thing. They bicker over cases at the dinner table, William alternately taking sides in a way that suggests anarchy. (Mulder calls him a tiebreaker when he takes his side. Scully calls him an anarchist either way.) He calls them on occasion after a suspect is caught to comment on their techniques. Scully brings another dog home from Oregon. 

On the Goldman case, she can't help but think of her son, be more than relieved that he never ended up on Goldman's wall. William brings her an ice pack after Kyle Gilligan throws her against a wall, says sympathetically, “On behalf of telekinetic teenagers everywhere, I'm sorry, Mom.”

“Thank you, sweetie,” she says, sucking in a wince through her teeth as she irritates a sore spot. “You could extend that apology from telekinetic teenagers to your dad, you know,” she adds, motioning to Mulder on the other side of the couch. “He got thrown across a room.”

“Oh, yeah,” William says, making a face at Mulder. “I dunno, Dad, sounds like you had it coming,” he teases. Mulder hurls a throw pillow at him as he retreats to the kitchen for another ice pack, snickering all the way. 

There are no problems until the case in Philadelphia comes up. They are driving up when Scully gets the call from William. “Juvenile punk,” Mulder mutters under his breath, not without affection. “It's nine in the morning! Tell him to go back to class.”

Scully shoots him a look as she answers the phone. “Will, what is it?” she says into the speaker. “Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“Mom, you've gotta come back,” William says in a rush, his voice shaking. “You gotta turn around. It's… it's Grandma.”

Scully's fingers go numb around the phone, icy. “What?” she manages to get out painfully. 

“I-I was in Chemistry, and I-I just saw her fall down…” It sounds like he's crying on the other end. “I called 9-1-1. They're headed over there now, but I think you should…” 

Scully lets the phone drop onto her lap. “Mulder, turn around,” she says. 

“Scully, what is i—” 

“Turn around!” she snaps, voice rising in fear, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. Quietly, he turns around. 

Scully pulls the phone back to her ear. “Will, can you see her?” she whispers. “Is she okay?”

“I can't see her,” William says, and he is crying. “I'm sorry, Mom, I can't see her, I'm so sorry…”

“It's okay,” she says, but the words don't seem like they are coming from her mouth. Everything William sees, and he cannot see her mother. “It's okay, honey, we're coming. We're coming.”

She stays on the line with William the entire time in case he starts to see something, but he doesn't. 

\---

Maggie dies that night. 

William has been quiet the entire time, mostly watching as Scully talks to her, talks to Charlie, talks to Bill, starts to fall apart. Maggie opens her eyes at Charlie’s voice, and William crowds beside Mulder at her bedside, takes her hand. She looks between the three of them, smiles, and closes her eyes. The machine beeps loudly. 

Scully falls apart loudly, but William falls apart quietly, quivering next to them as Scully buries her face in Mulder's chest. Mulder wraps his arms around them both as best he can, even though William is too tall to be held anymore. Scully sobs into his chest. William presses his tear-stained face into the space below Mulder's armpit. Mulder rests his chin on Scully's head and watches them wheel his mother-in-law’s body away, swallows tears of his own.

Scully wants to go to Philadelphia. She  _ needs  _ to work, she tells him, and if it weren't for their son, he would agree. But William needs them. William, who is trembling in his chair beside him, wiping the tears off of his face. William, who watched his grandmother have a heart attack. “We can't,” he whispers to her, wiping tears off of her face. “Scully, we can't. I know how you feel, I understand, but we can't. William needs us here.”

Scully looks between William and her mother's empty bed. Her chin trembles. She nods. 

Mulder drives them home. Scully and William fall asleep in the living room, piled up on the floor in the midst of pillows and both the dogs. He covers them with a blanket and sits on the couch behind him, rubbing his eyes, blinking back tears. 

\---

They are the only ones at the funeral, spreading Maggie's ashes in the lake where she and Scully's father had spent their twentieth anniversary. After the urn is empty, Scully leans into Mulder's side on the log where they are watching the lake. William stands, walking to the lake and pacing along the shoreline. 

Mulder rubs the length of Scully's arm comfortingly; she sniffles into his suit jacket. He watches their son, hands in his suit jacket, tie hanging loose around his neck. He kicks at a pile of rocks at the edge of the water. He blinks rapidly, looking off at the horizon. 

He's been incredibly quiet in the days since Maggie passed, absorbed in his own thoughts, reading a lot. Jumping whenever someone speaks to him. Mulder gets a sense of what he is thinking; he himself has felt it a million times. 

“Honey?” he says to the crown of Scully's head. “Do you think you'll be okay for a minute? If I go check on William?” Scully nods, her nose brushing the length of his chest. 

He kisses the top of her head before getting up from the log, his joints creaking. His dress shoes leave indents in the wet sand as he walks across the beach to William. He stands beside him, the water lapping over the toes of their shoes. “Hi, Will,” he says, putting his hand on William's shoulder. William doesn't say anything and doesn't look at him. The sky is streaked blue and gray; a fitting mood for the day, he thinks. 

“Do you think Grandma can see us, wherever she is?” William rasps, his voice still full of tears. 

Mulder swallows, squeezing his shoulder. “I hope so,” he says softly. 

“After all these years of being able to see her, it's weird to… to not…” William breaks off, swallowing painfully. 

“William, it's not your fault,” Mulder says. “You know that, right?”

“I saved you,” he mumbles. “When I was a kid. Why couldn't I save her?”

“She had a heart attack. There was nothing you could've done even if you had been with her. There's nothing anyone could've done, not you or your mom or…”

“I think Mom blames me,” William says suddenly, and it sounds like all the air knocked out of him, like a sucker punch. 

“She doesn't blame you,” Mulder says immediately. “She's upset and she's vulnerable, and when she asked if you could see your grandmother, it was because she was scared. But she doesn't blame you, Will. She doesn't. She knows there wasn't anything you could do.”

William blinks back tears, sniffling. Mulder wraps his arm around his bony shoulders and hugs him from the side. “She loves you more than anything in the world, kid,” he says. “And so do I. She doesn't blame you. We don't expect a thing from your abilities. We just want you to be a good person, what any parent would want from their child.”

William wipes his eyes, his nose. “Thanks, Dad,” he says, leaning his head on Mulder's shoulder. 

At the other end of the beach, Scully has stood and is walking towards them. Mulder nudges William's side and gestures towards her. William sniffles, stepping away and turning to face Scully. 

When she reaches them, she wordlessly opens her arms. William steps into them, engulfing her with his overlarge frame, resting his chin on the top of her head. Ridiculously taller than her; Mulder remembers a day a long time ago when he was so small that his head fit in the palm of his father's hand, and he fell asleep on Scully's chest one day, gnawing on his fist and gurgling happily.

The lake water laps at their dress shoes. They stand like that for a long time.

\---

Scully has a vision. It's all confusing, muddled, a man that breaks into their house looking for William. Mulder is gone, run off to find the cigarette smoker, who is somehow still alive, and Scully is trying to find him and protect her son, who is somehow not sick and neither is she, though everyone around them is sick, and it's terrifying. Monica Reyes shows up promising to protect William and Scully is nodding, instructing William to call her and sending him off with her old partner because she needs her son safe and she needs to find Mulder and she needs to save the world. The world is falling apart, and she has no cure. Looters, alien DNA, some kid from the FBI who reminds her of Mulder meeting her on a bridge with him, and Mulder's sick, he's dying, and William isn't picking up his phone. Her son, her partner, and the world is ending, where's William, where's William. There is a UFO, and it is blinding her, and she hears William's voice in her head:  _ Mom, Mom, Mom.  _

_ Will,  _ she says back, shouting, hoping he can hear her, but the words stay in her head. Her vision is white from the light.  _ William.  _

\---

Mulder finds Scully unconscious on the floor of their office and immediately calls an ambulance. The paramedics arrive and he hovers near, answering questions while they check her out. They tell him she's had a seizure.

On the floor where he dropped it, his phone begins to ring, and he starts to ignore it until he sees that it's Will’s school. And then he lunges across the floor to answer. 

The principal is calling, very apologetic. Apparently William has had a seizure, too, and they called him because Scully isn't picking up her phone. They've called an ambulance to the school.

Mulder starts to panic worse. This, he knows, has to be connected. For some reason, his wife and his son had a seizure, and for whatever reason, he did not, even though he's always seen things from William with Scully before. He doesn't know what it means. He wants to see his son. 

It takes some convincing, but the paramedics agree to take Scully to the hospital where William has been taken. Mulder is asked to wait outside until they can be checked out. He paces the floor outside, Skinner (who'd accompanied him) offering bullshit comfort. 

The neurologist finally comes out, but she's at a loss to explain anything. She shows him Scully and William's brains on screens, shows him that there is extremely abnormal activity going back and forth between them. Almost like a conversation. 

Mulder's stomach thunks. Whatever the reason, they are communicating, and whatever the reason, it ended in a lot worse than a bad headache. Whatever happens, he is grateful to be alert and able to help them, but he wants to know why this is happening and why it is only happening to them. He wants to know  _ what _ is happening, what they're seeing. He wants to know that they're okay. 

He wants to see them. There's a chair between their beds; he goes and sits by his wife and his son, watching them both like hawks. 

Scully he's seen like this a million times, limp and pale in a hospital bed, but it's been years and experience never takes the gut punch away. And William… he's only ever been in the hospital a few times, once for his broken arm, again for his broken wrist, and once for when he had his tonsils out, and Mulder has never seen him like this, small and helpless. It makes him angry, makes him want to scream. 

Scully and William sleep, and he sits between them and watches. When Scully wakes up, he takes her hand and listens to what she has to say. But he doesn't go anywhere—not to look for the smoker, not to hunt down anyone in revenge. His family needs him. 

\---

When William wakes up, his father is asleep in the chair beside his bed, his head lolling against the back of the chair and his hand flat on the mattress beside Will’s head. William sits up further and sees his mother, sitting up in the bed that's pushed close enough that his dad can be near them both, holding his dad's hand as they dangle between the bed in the chair. 

“Mom,” William says, swinging his feet off the side of the bed and standing. 

She sees him, and her face pales a little, maybe with relief, maybe with worry. “Will, don't. You need to rest,” she says in her usual stern tone, but her voice is weak. 

Will ignores her, walks shakily around the bed and to the other side. His mother seems to understand what he's thinking and she scoots over so he can sit down beside her. He puts his head on her shoulder like he is a small child who needs comforting. And after what he's seen, he just might. 

“You saw it, too,” he says. 

His mother nods, covering his hand with hers briefly. “Where did…” she rasps, clears her throat before continuing. “Where did she take you? Monica Reyes.”

“To my grandfather,” William says, and he can feel his mom shudder beside him. “The guy who smokes. The one Dad went to see.”

His mother takes a shaky breath. “That is not going to happen,” she says firmly. “I promise.”

“Dad,” William whispers, his eyes flickering over to where his dad sleeps. “He's going to die if you can't use my cells to save him.”

“I know,” his mom whispers, and it sounds like she's going to cry. William shuts his eyes, but finds only horror waiting for him. Sickness, death, a motherfucking UFO. The end of the fucking world. 

“But that's not going to happen,” says his mom, a little sharply, and William startles, opening his eyes. “I'm not letting them take either of you away from me. Never.”

William exhales slowly, offers, “Well, we know to avoid old colleagues of yours.”

His mom chuffs out a brief, quiet laugh. “Well, that is true,” she mutters.

William sits up a little bit, turns to look his mother in the eye. “We can do this, Mom,” he says. “We can save Dad. We did it before, remember? When I was seven?”

“Settle down, William, you need to rest,” his mother says automatically, but she's nodding. “Yes, I remember. And you're right.” She's still holding his dad's hand; he watches her squeeze it. “We're going to stay together, no matter what,” she says. “I promise.”

William nods, lying back down because his head is spinning. He swallows back the stale spit in his mouth, speaks to the ceiling when he says, “You know, in addition to Dad… do you think we could save the rest of the world, Mom?”

He can feel her tense beside him, but he hears her hair rustling against the pillow, a sign she's nodding. “Yes, Will,” she says. “I really hope we can.”


End file.
